To celebrate Vikings Live, we have replaced our Roman alphabet with the runic alphabet used by the Vikings, the Scandinavian ‘Younger Futhark’. The ‘Younger Futhark’ has only 16 letters, so we have used some of the runic letters more than once or combined two runes for one Roman letter.

Michela Spataro

Scientist

Contact

Michela is responsible for scientific analyses
of clay and stone artefacts in the Museum collection. She uses
optical microscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy to identify raw
material sources and the technological processes used to produce
these artefacts.

She is particularly interested in the provenance of ceramic raw
materials (clays and mineral inclusions) which can indicate where a
pot was manufactured, and therefore shed light on patterns of
pottery production and trade in the past. She has also worked on
porcelain, clay tablets, mosaic tesserae, stoneware, marble and
sandstone, and collaborates with conservators to assess changes in
the condition of marble or limestone statues.

Before joining the Museum in 2007, Michela was a Leverhulme
Trust Research Fellow at UCL Institute of Archaeology, studying the
early Neolithic Starčevo-Criş Culture in Romania, Serbia and
Croatia, which produced the earliest pottery in continental Europe.
This project was linked to her PhD research, also at UCL Institute
of Archaeology, on early and middle Neolithic pottery production
and circulation in the Adriatic region (Italy and Croatia).

Since 2003 she has also been a lecturer in Balkan and European
prehistory at Ca’ Foscari University (Venice, Italy).

Lecturer of the MA course in European and Balkan prehistory at
Venice University (Italy)

Honorary Research Associate of the Institute of Archaeology,
UCL

Editor of The Old Potter’s Almanack

Member of the Italian archaeological mission in Pakistan

Member of the Italian archaeological mission in Romania

Member of the Interdepartmental Centre for Balkan Studies
(Venice International University)

Member of the Ceramic Petrology Group (UK)

Selected publications

M. Spataro, The First Farming Communities of the Adriatic:
Pottery Production and Circulation in the Early and Middle
Neolithic (Trieste, Società per la Preistoria e Protostoria
della Regione Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Quaderno 9, 2002)

M. Spataro (ed.) A Short Walk Through the Balkans: the First
Farmers of the Carpathian Basin and Adjacent Regions, with P.
Biagi (Trieste, Società per la Preistoria e Protostoria della
Regione Friuli-Venezia Giulia Quaderno 12, 2007)

Spataro M. Cultural Diversities: the Early Neolithic
in the Adriatic region and Central Balkans. A Pottery perspective.
In Gheorghiu D. (ed.) Early Farmers, Late Foragers, and Ceramic
Traditions: On the Beginning of Pottery in the Near East and
Europe, (Chapter 4). Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
Newcastle upon Tyne (2009), 63-86.